Saturday, 1 November 2008

You may or may not be aware (those that have been on mars for the week :P ) that Linden Labs has made the monumental announcement that they intend to hike the cost of Open Space Sims by 66% effective of 1st January 2009. This has caused a huge outrage with Second Life residents and as there are around 13000 Open Space Sims out there that means that pretty much everyone is affected in some way shape or form.This has already led to the abandonment of Open Space Sims by Landowners and Residents alike. A lot have introduced the price rises already. Come January there will be a lot of Estate Failures due to the hikes. And there is likely to be a big shift away from Open Space Sims back onto full prim Islands.So how does that affect Tribe and you our residents?

Firstly, we are going nowhere and assure you that our residents are our first priority.

Secondly, if the price increase is in fact confirmed for January , Tribe will only introduce a partial price increase on Open Space Sims and absorb the balance internally. There will be no price changes before January . However please note the increase is NOT yet confirmed and Tribe are fighting the cause against the increase as vigorously as possible!

Thirdly, there will be No price changes on full prim Islands.

If the price increase is implemented , for those that want to relocate we will offer any Tribe Open Space resident relocation to an equivalent Full sim parcel and we will honour any ownership claims of that resident at no extra cost.

Finally, although this is a bombshell from our Lord and Masters at Linden Labs there is still much hope that, if they don’t reverse the decision completely they at least could soften the blow. So nothing is set in stone as of now!

Your interests are foremost in our minds and we will do all that we can to ensure minimum disruption. Please feel free to put your thoughts and comments on this issue we will reply to all comments.

3 comments:

Linden also plan to introduce something so that we can see what kind of land we are on, be it Mainland, private estate or open space. We can't do that just now, but I guess those that are on Tribe open space know that they are. Are open space sims a major part of Tribe?

We know that you look after your residents ... and maybe that's why you have so many loyal ones. I would not want to see your biz get into trouble and would support anything you have to do in response to LL.

Thank you for your comments Kas we really appreciate them!! As far as our exposure to Open Space Sims, our core business is very much our full prim Islands. Having said that. The demand for OSS was such, that we had little choice but to offer the option. Our whole philosophy was to only allow light residential use with a maximum of 3 residents per OSS. There is one exception to this which is a small nightclub which occupies its own full OSS. So out of nearly 30 OSS our resource demand for the sims is exceptionally low. And we have never had any performance problems on the sims that a Reset didn’t sort out.Ongoing, Tribe has always maintained a capital reserve that would allow us to ride the bumps of the SL economy and to protect our residents. Be totally assured that we would never abandon land or not pay tier on an island thus leaving a resident out of pocket. This will NOT happen.

We have always said we would only operate in a totally ethical way….plus we kinda like you lot as well!!!!!!!!